Today would have been my dad’s 75th birthday. In honor of the day, I thought I’d share a fun little gift from the universe. In 1810, a man named Nicholas Murrell Page was born in Nelson County Virginia. My grandparents didn’t know that dude existed. In 1942, my dad was born and christened Nicholas Allen Page. As an adult, he moved to Nelson County, not knowing about this distant relative of his. When we did find out about him, we found a picture and were holyshitted. “Holyshitted” is when you’re shocked to find something out. I’m sure it’s a real word. But maybe don’t look it up. Anyway, check out the pictures below and you’ll see why.

The pics on the left were of my dad in his dirty, dirty hippy days when he had a similar haircut. The pic on the right is Nicholas Murrell Page.

Holyshit, right?! My mom and I were talking about how strange it is that we never dressed Dad up and made him pose next to Nicholas M. Page’s portrait that hung in our living room. It just seems like something we would do. Ah well, lost opportunities.

Anyway, this doesn’t really have anything to do with his birthday, but it’s one of those crazy things that the world sometimes throws your way to delight and astound you, so I thought I’d share it.

Happy birthday, Dad. Miss you. Hope you’re out there somewhere being delighted and astounded by all sorts of other things that I can’t even imagine.

Have you all been watching This Is Us? If not, stop everything and go binge watch it. Now. I’ll wait…See??!!! It’s the best show on TV right now. In the most recent episode, a couple of the characters hold each others’ faces to help soothe them in a moment of distress. I was thinking about what an intimate and loving thing it is to touch someone’s face. We do it to our parents, our children, our spouses. It’s like we’re embracing the thing that most tells the world who we are – the physical manifestation of our identity. Even if we don’t normally consider ourselves beautiful, when someone touches our face lovingly, we feel lovely in that moment. It makes us feel seen, accepted, valued. Allowing someone to hold our face takes trust and an acceptance of vulnerability. And holding someone’s face in our own hands makes us feel tender toward them. It makes us generous and protective. It’s a true act of love, probably even more than kissing.

Let’s call it a face hug.

Even more than a year after my dad died, I can still feel his face in my hands. That thought, while sad because I miss it, does bring a quiet joy. And it reminds me of how much love there was between us.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get this up on Etsy soon and post a link for purchase. Until then, you can get prints and other merch here and here.

Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here or here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

Spoiler Alert: The Tooth Fairy isn’t real. If you’re a small child or someone who somehow didn’t already know this, please stop reading. Also, go back to the first sentence and unread it.

With that out of the way, I would like to tell you how I know this. When I was a kid and lost my bazillionth tooth (I have a lot of teeth. I’m part shark, apparently), I put my tooth in the little pocket of the pillowcase my parents had given me for the nights the Tooth Fairy was supposed to visit. I rested my rosy little cheek upon my pillow and closed my eyes and drifted softly off to dreamland, imaging the piles and piles of candy I would be able to purchase with the quarter that would be left for me.

Not long after, I was awakened by the sound of a thundering herd of rhinoceri (didn’t you know that that was the plural of rhinoceros?!) charging down the hallway. Timidly, I crept to the door and peeked around the corner, only to discover that it was actually my dad, arms flapping daintily, flitting about merrily on tippy toe in front of the bathroom door to make my mom laugh while she was brushing her teeth. Didn’t he know that was a choking hazzard?! Way to go, Dad.

When confronted, he tried to claim that he was actually the Tooth Fairy’s representative for the southeastern United States. But I did a thorough check and he did not have a pair of wings, and that’s not even remotely practical. What, was he going to drive to every state within his district to hand out money?! As if.

Thus, he dashed all of my dreams, which also alerted me to the whole thing about Santa. I won’t spoiler alert you on that one – wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone not in the know. All for a cheap laugh from his wife – doin’ marriage right. Parenting, though? Meh.

Thanks so much for reading my ridiculous thoughts! If you’d like to see my ridiculous thoughts translated into art, visit my website, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Know a caregiver, or someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone with dementia, or someone who knows someone who knows someone else who’s a caregiver? Or heck, do you know a person? Well, you should tell them about my book, Fractured Memories: Because Demented People Need Love, Too. Part memoir and part coffee table art book, I recount my family’s heartbreaking and hilarious journey through my father’s dementia. Available to purchase here (this is my favorite way if you live in the U.S.), here if you’d rather get the eBook than a print copy, and here (especially if you want a hard cover copy).

It’s been a tough few days for me. Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my dad’s death, and I’m missing him somethin’ fierce. Images from his final, painful days keep creeping into my head and stealing my breath, even though I thought I was past that trauma. I’ve been in duck and cover mode as a result, and wanting to just hide under a rock somewhere far, far away from the world. But that’s not how life works, so I’m turning to paint. With brush in hand, I’ve been tapping and dabbing and flicking my way through the pain, trying to find a more meditative state. It’s been hard, so I took the whole meditative, zen thing a little more literally, this time focusing on the Buddha.

My dad had loved yoga in the years prior to the dementia hitting, and he still practiced it for awhile after we moved him to a dementia care facility. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary in the courtyard of the facility, and every morning, my dad would go outside, bow to the statue and say, “Namaste.” Thinking of that now, even in the midst of all this sadness, brings a quiet smile. Namaste, papa.

Since my dad died 5 months ago, I’ve had dreams and nightmares about him almost nightly. In the dreams, he’s always in the early to middle stages of the dementia and either he’s wreaking havoc or I’m trying unsuccessfully to protect him from something. As a result, I have not really wanted to go to bed. When I do, I tend to lie there and start remembering him, which upsets me, because I’m never remembering good stuff. It’s never the stuff from before the disease took hold. I have crisp, clear memories of just about everything following putting him into the dementia care facility, but memories before that are hazy.

Except “hazy” isn’t the right word. I was trying to explain this to S a couple nights ago. Since as far back as I can remember (which isn’t as far back as you’d think, which I’ll explain in a minute), my memories have been dark, like when you’ve been outside on a really sunny day and then go inside, and you have those couple seconds before your eyes have adjusted and everything is just too dark to make out clearly. I have little snapshots of images or events, like old Polaroids that are dark around the edges (and like my peripheral vision is gone), but they seem like just that – photographs, not actual memories. When I was in 6th grade, I fell off a horse and got a really bad concussion that caused me to lose my memory. I still knew who I was and that kind of thing, but my short term memory was affected for awhile (which made school interesting) and I forgot much of my early childhood memories. I have no memory of the event itself that caused the concussion. We jokingly referred to my life before the fall as BC (before concussion). Eventually, over time, I recovered some memories. I’d be in class in college and suddenly remember that I had a trundle bed and call my parents all excited that I remembered something. I think I’ve also made up memories based on old home movies and photographs, which may account for the dark, photographic quality of so many of my “memories.”

The problem is that my memories of my dad before the dementia are like that, too, now. I can remember little snippets of who he was or what I loved about him, but they’re too dark to grab hold of and examine or take pleasure in. They’re a concept of who he was, not who he really was. And when I miss him, I’m less missing him as he was pre-dementia than I am missing the child he became to me. When I miss his hugs, it’s not the lean, fit dad I had had, it’s the huge-bellied, slightly stale smelling man-child wrapping me up in his arms. I guess it was just too long a time that we had to know him as not-him, and those are the memories and images that are seared into my brain. Maybe I was so busy committing them to memory in anticipation of losing him completely someday that it made me forget him.

And so, when I lie in bed, I have to fight those harder images – especially the ones from his last few days. I try to do everything I can to wear myself out enough that I can just go to sleep, staying up later than I should so that I can collapse into bed and not have too much time to think. I did that a couple nights ago, with the result being that I felt both nauseated and exhausted, which was how I felt over the couple days that Mom and I spent in his room waiting for him to die. And suddenly, I was in a flashback. I was back in that room, with the horrible sound of him moaning and the oxygen tank pumping away, with his arms and legs seizing and turning purple, and I felt so helpless again. So fucking helpless.

I’m brought down by the thought of how much he suffered and of how he wouldn’t leave us – how he moaned a little louder every time I told him it was time for him to let go, and how he waited until Mom and I finally both left the room at the same time to die. That agony he displayed haunts me.

I’ve been trying to do that thing where, when you have a really bad memory, you try to focus on something happier, but those happy memories of him from before the dementia…they’re just so damn dark. I can’t focus on them because they’re not solidly there. I can think of other vaguely happier or funnier memories of him when he was more alert and I could still make him laugh, but those memories are still sad ones, so they don’t help much.

So that’s what I’m doing right now. Sitting here waiting until I’m so tired I have to go to bed, but worrying that if I get too tired, I’ll put myself into another flashback. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

Just a reminder to anyone who feels like cheering me and helping me honor my dad on my first Father’s Day following his death: Pretty please with sugar on top, put a penny out (heads up) somewhere, then snap a quick picture of it and email it to me at info@emilypageart.com or post it on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/emilypageart/. I love you to pieces (large ones so that you’re easy to put back together again). You’re the best.

Flipping through my alma mater’s alumni magazine (titled this time, “The Writer’s Issue”), I was searching for possible future contacts once my book is ready to promote. When I was done, I did what I always do: flip to the Class Notes in the back. I generally skip over the older people and see if I know anyone from the years I attended that are having babies, or getting married, or dying, or changing the world. While flipping to the back, my eye caught the bottom right corner that had my dad’s obituary. I remember submitting it to the university when we sent the obit out to the world, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to me to look for it, so it caught me totally by surprise. I hate that. I hate when it knocks the breath out of you for that second. I hate the tears that come unexpectedly. I hate reading the date of his death.

I’ve been trying so hard to insulate myself from the onslaught of Father’s Day promotions,protecting myself in the bubble of my home. I avoid movies where people die. I distract myself with paint and stupid tv shows, my husband and the cats. It felt like a betrayal for the reminder to barge into my living room like that.

I’m down a finger as I type this because I have a blood blister on the tip of my ring finger from framing a painting today. Try typing without using that finger. I double dog dare you. It’s rough. Do you see how I suffer for my art?!!! But I’m fighting through the pain (which really barely hurts but with which I plan to milk sympathy out of my husband when he gets home tonight) because I have to let you know that I’m 10 pre-orders away from hitting the 500 mark. Fer rillz. I was so worried that I wouldn’t even be able to hit the 250 mark, and we busted right through that goal in about 3 days. I could cry, but I won’t, because apparently when I start I don’t stop. On Monday, I watched Grey’s Anatomy and started crying. Then I kept crying through 2 episodes of Dance Mom’s. And kept crying while I fixed dinner and checked some emails. I’m not even kidding, you guys, I cried for almost 4 hours and I didn’t even know why. I cried so long I got dehydrated and basically had a hangover the next day. So I have resolved not to cry for the next several days. If I’m going to have a hangover, it should be from too much bourbon, not too much crying. But the real point of all of that was to say thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered the book and/or shared the link to the campaign on their own blogs and other social media pages. You’re helping me make a pile of shit into lemonade (the spiked kind). You make a girl feel loved.

For anyone stumbling across the blog over the next few days who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, you can read my book proposal at https://publishizer.com/fractured-memories/. Then order a copy and tell your friends!

In less than 72 hours, I have had over 250 pre-orders for my book, Fractured Memories, about my family’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrible journey through my dad’s dementia. Seriously. Are you people kidding me? Did you know you were that awesome? Did you? I kind of vaguely suspected you might be pretty cool, but damn, I had no idea you were this amazeballs.

So I’m upping the stakes. I know, I’m getting greedy. My new goal is 500 pre-orders by April 30th. It’s the next tier on Publishizer. Now that I’ve hit 250, they’ll send queries out to 41 publishers in my category. If I hit 500, they’ll personally pitch to a more select group of publishers, upping my chances that much more of getting a book deal. If we can get 250 in 3 days, I’m thinking we should be able to get another 250 in the next 23 days – but only if you’ll help me spread the word!! It’s only $7 to order a digital version of the book. If that’s not in the budget (which believe me, I totally understand), you can still help by posting a link to your own blog or social media pages to the campaign:

You can read my entire proposal, see some of the art that will be in the book, watch and make fun of my awkward and dorky self on the video I made (I know, it’s sad), order a digital or print copy and get other perks at the link above. And again, the more people know, the more likely it’ll be that we’ll hit 500. Thank you in advance and I’m sorry if you’re getting sick of my begging. Just a little more, I promise!

Hi everyone, I’m freaking out and am about to do some serious begging. Now that my dad has died and our journey through dementia is complete, I’ve decided it’s time to take the plunge and write the book. I’m in the process of compiling and adding to the writing and paintings I’ve done about my family’s experiences with dementia. I’ve launched a campaign on Publishizer.com to try to get enough pre-orders for my book to attract the attention of publishers. But I NEED HELP SPREADING THE WORD! I’ve only 30 days to get at least 250 pre-orders. For only $7, you can get a pdf copy of the book once it’s finished, and there are rewards for higher donations and purchases, much like gofundme.com or indiegogo.com. I really want to attract the attention of a publisher ASAP so that I can justify taking off a little time from work to write while everything is still fresh. You can read the book proposal and place your order here: https://publishizer.com/fractured-memories/

So do a girl a favor and tell everyone you know, and then pop over to place your order. And then pass me the bourbon because I’m about to have a heart attack. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!